Hill Forts (British History)

[frank h]

The Iron Age Hill forts seemingly have contemporary close neighbours in the don/dun/down villages and farms of mainly England. Similarly the Gaelic duns of Scotland and Ireland. While in Wales they're typically dinas. Also in England the 'worth' villages are pretty close.

Thus speculating on this puzzle, perhaps this apparent proximity suggests an acceptable relationship, whereby maybe the celtic Hill fort pastoral societies used these people, (let's call them the British i.e. proto English and Scots of the AS Chronicle), work the lowlands as arable farmers to provide supplies, without doing the back breaking work themselves, whose subsequent higher birth rate eventually totally absorbed the celts in England and Ireland, partially in Wales, and the Picts of Scotland. The later Roman occupation thirst for agricultural products perhaps recruited other immigrants as well.

Maybe a process much like today's Europe uses immigrants to do the manual and low paid jobs.

[Boreades]

[frank h]

[Wile E. Coyote]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12997877

Maybe your farming types shared round the single plough they have ever found, between the Romans leaving and the tenth century.

Maybe your folks just liked to make life difficult...

[frank h]

[Mick Harper]

Let's not forget that bronze makes just as good ploughares as iron.

[Hatty]

Mettle Hill, north/north-east of Royston, overlooks the intersection of Icknield Way and Ermine Street. Wiki says it used to be called Motlowehyll suggesting it was some kind of meeting place (and, by extension, man-made). Archaeologists surmise the Romans hereabouts modified and metalled the Icknield Way route and they've found a number of prehistoric trackways or hollow-ways running east-west overlaid by a causeway.

It was clearly a well-travelled route where ruts had been repaired over many years and appropriately enough Mettle Hill was a travellers' site until the people were evicted in 2012.. Many of the surrounding barrows have been dated to the Bronze Age and assumed to have a funeral or ritual purpose by archaeologists rather than slag-heaps.

Further to the north-east though are far more imposing obstacles such as Fleam Dyke, Brent Ditch, Devil's (or St Edmund's) Dyke and so on. It seems likely these east-west ditches at such a busy cross-roads served the same purpose,

[frank h]

[Wile E. Coyote]

I recently attended, with my better half, an exhibition on castles through the ages. Keen to show off, (who isn't?) I was happily lecturing on about hillforts.....

My wife was visibly impressed, in fact so impressed she started asking incredibly awkward ie simple questions... about the origin of the so called motte and bailey and asking me to identify typical elements in each picture. This proved surprisingly difficult, much to her amusement..

A quick google reveals what a wally I have been.

That will teach me.